The New Year Cometh

And so, the obligatory reflection on the year post is here.

Both spiritually and personally, this has been a rocky year for me. (The two are inevitably intertwined, no?) It was, after all, the tail end of my Saturn Return. Probably the most significant change was the beginning of the first year of homeschooling my children. The time and energy that this demands is staggering, especially in this initial stage where rhythm is not yet established and Mom is learning along with the little ones. Commitments that I had made in previous years had to end, and even those that remained were scaled down in order to accomodate my new role as "teacher."

2010 had me:
-disbanding the coven I'd founded four years earlier because of time and energy constraints and taking on an apprentice to abate the loss;
-realizing that my visions of four small children tagging along with me to collect enough wildcrafted material for incenses and brews that made up a huge part of my "witch for hire" gig was unrealistic and facing the (very small but nonetheless significant) loss of income that came with this realization;
-facing the fact that I would not be returning to med school or getting a nursing degree as I'd planned this year;
-losing my own identity again and again as I struggled to find the balance between my various roles as mother, wife, teacher, priestess, and witch;
-planning a move across the country only to have those plans cancelled, leading to the realization that moving is probably imperative for my soul;
-facing my 26-years-estranged father and the barrage of feelings and deeply hidden issues this brought to the forefront (this shall be ongoing);
-finding joy in my deepening relationship with the land I live on but knowing I still have a long way to go;
-experiencing the silencing of a deity to whom I'd been devoted most of my life and hearing the call of a dozen others only to come full circle right back to the one I'd started with, albeit with a deepening connection to a couple others (still don't know how this is going to shake down).

I will spend tonight, New Year's Eve, enjoying our annual traditions with my family. I'd love to say that our menu is traditional Hungarian, but that'd be a lie. I'm not a fan of jellied pigs' feet, sorry. Instead we feast on a mixed bag: steak fondue, shrimp, sauerkraut or sweet and sour cabbage (depending on whether or not I've been diligent and actually made the sauerkraut), potato salad, rye bread, and wine or sparkling grape juice (for pregnant/nursing mamas and littles). I will interview the kids using the same list of questions we've been using since the twins could talk, record their answers, and place them in their designated baby books. The husband and I will listen to "crazy guy radio" (a show on NPR I've called crazy guy radio for so long that I've forgotten its real name) and its predictions of zombie apocalypses and alien invasions for the upcoming year while the children struggle to stay awake until midnight. When the clock strikes twelve, we will descend like locusts upon our front porch, armed with an arsenal of pots, pans, their respective lids, and various other kitchen implements and proceed to make the most obnoxious amount of noise possible to drive away all malefics from the shiny, clean slate of the new year (minus the husband, who is embarassed by this practice).

2011, treat me well. For all of my friends, as my Hungarian grandmother used to say: all things good to you, with just enough of the bullshit thrown in to keep you from getting bored.